Apart from a growing interest in aquaculture activities in Australia, there is a need to identify the impacts associated with those activities, in order to protect the marine ecosystem. This is a high priority for Australian environmental regulators who are unlikely to allow additional aquaculture activities in the absence of knowledge about possible environmental impacts.

Gaps in our knowledge on the effects of aquaculture impacts on seagrasses and on ways to protect and restore seagrasses were highlighted in a recent review commissioned by FRDC (Butler and Jernakoff 1999). Potential impacts on seagrass meadows include the effects of reduced light and increased nutrient levels. Other issues of importance include the responses of seagrasses to perturbations and the time taken for seagrasses to recover from these impacts. Unless regulators can be confident that shellfish longline aquaculture does not significantly impact areas such as seagrass meadows, it is unlikely that the industry will be able to utilise these potentially suitable areas for expansion and development. Therefore, there is an urgent need to obtain this information and that it has the power to assist environmental regulators in knowing the level of impact, or lack thereof, when making decisions regarding the development of additional aquaculture leases.

Specific needs for the research are formed by the following questions:

- Can mussel farming be conducted over seagrass beds without impact?
- Are the impacts of mussel farming reversible over time if aquaculture activities cease in a particular area (e.g. through site rotation)?
- Is the extent of impact of mussel farming on seagrasses the same throughout the year (i.e. seasonal influences)?
- Are the rates of impact and recovery from potential impact from mussel farming compatible with available adaptive management options?

There is thus a need to undertake research to:

- Provide managers and regulators with appropriate data on the likely consequences of siting mussel leases on or near seagrass communities so they can make informed decisions
- Provide quantitative data on the a) physical changes and b) biological changes to the seagrass habitat as a result of longline mussel aquaculture provide recommendations on management options to minimise seagrass disturbance from longline aquaculturel
- Provide data that allows mussel aquaculture to develop in an orderly and sustainable manner
- Provide a tool for future management decisions on the interaction of aquaculture and seagrass

This is project will develop a “Indigenous Turtle and Dugong Conservation Comic” project for the Department of Agriculture Fisheries and Forestry that increases the understanding of Indigenous dugong and turtle fishermen about species sustainability and the population impacts if extraction continues at current levels.

The Torres Strait region is characterised by a complex marine ecosystem, which supports globally significant populations of dugong and marine turtles. Torres Strait is the most important dugong habitat in the world and the region has six of the seven species of marine turtles.

Within Torres Strait there are nineteen Indigenous communities distributed across seventeen geographically remote islands stretching to the south-western coast of Papua New Guinea and the northern tip of Cape York Peninsula. These communities are very diverse in terms of their socio-economic, cultural and political characteristics. Each community also has differing priorites, needs and concerns in relation to local issues affecting turtle and dugong.

Story telling is the basis for Indigenous communication. Families prefer messages as stories because they resonate with people's day to day experience and have been the cornerstone of passing on culture and values. Many organisations now understand the value of this form of communication. This project, to develop a series of educational comic books in collaboration with Island youth, is needed to develop grassroots knowledge of conservation and fisheries management, and committment to sustainable practices for harvest of dugong and turtle.

This knowledge and committment is necessary to ensure young Indigenosu school students understand the environemental impacts of traditional harvest of marine turtle and duging, and in turn to ensure the sustainability of traditional hunting practice.

This proposal was developed in response to a call from WCTBFMAC for research into
the population structure of bigeye tuna stocks exploited in the west coast tuna fishery.
The longline fishery for bigeye tuna off the western coast of Australia is a rapidly
expanding fishery due to the high export value of this species. information
regarding the stock structure of bigeye tuna is vital for the long term sustainability of the
fishery. Uncertainty regarding bigeye stock structure seriously restricts the confidence
that scientists and fisheries managers can place in the regional assessments that have been
carried out to date. At a national or sub-regional level, fisheries managers need to have a
better idea of the broader surrounding population of bigeye from which the fish in their
fisheries are drawn. In fact, knowledge of the stock structure of bigeye tuna in the eastern
Indian Ocean has been listed as the number one priority of the Western Coast Tuna and
Billfish Management Advisory Committee.

The overriding needs for this project are to maintain a sustainable fishery for P. monodon to ensure broodstock supply to the Australian prawn farming industry.

This project requests an early start in order to sample the two recruitments into the main fishery, and to address the lack of broodstock, to supply the doubling of the current size of the P. monodon farming industry in the following 1 to 2 years.

1) Little published information is available on wild broodstock biology and ecology, presumably because P. monodon is really an incidental catch. Nevertheless, information on the species has been collected in logbook programs (eg. QDPI, Bill Izard and Jim Brownings tagging of adult P. monodon in the Cairns/Innisfail regions), and in many studies directed at other penaeids. Information on the species is thinly distributed over a large number of datasets, uncollated and unanalysed. This study will undertake the collation of information over a 6 month period at the beginning of this project to assisst in refining later stages of this project.

2) Although considerable effort and resources have been allocated to the full domestication of P.monodon, both nationally and internationally, the commercial production of closed broodstock is as yet not viable. The P. monodon prawn farming industry is currently dependent on wild caught broodstock and will be for the foreseeable future. Pressures are building for the known wild stocks to supply an expanding local and international aquaculture market that is expected to double or triple in the following one to two years, yet little is known of the size and sustainability of currently sourced Queensland stocks of this species. There is a clear and present need to establish the size of the resource to maintain the existing industry and further establish a regular and sustainable supply of broodstock to ensure national expansion and viability of P. monodon prawn farming.

3). There is a need for alternative capture methods and associated stress testing to be assessed. This is required by commercial broodstock collectors and the Northern Territory fishery to capture the highest quality broodstock, source broodstock from different habitats, manage specific fisheries and to lessen environmental impacts of the fishery.

4). There is a need for an economic assessment of potential gains to the industry from optimising the quantity, quality and timing of the supply of P. monodon broodstock.

Attachment 1 provides a dissection of the research problem.

Climate change is expected to alter physical and chemical oceanographic conditions and processes around Australia, yet the influence this could have on the distributions of various marine species is still relatively unknown. The marine waters of South Eastern Australia are expected to be significantly affected by climate change, experiencing the greatest climate-driven changes in the southern hemisphere over the next century. The impacts and opportunities that will result from these changes will depend, in part, on how well the fisheries and aquaculture sectors and their managers respond to these challenges. A sound risk-based approach to informing both management arrangements and decisions by the sectors will be critical for optimizing outcomes. It is essential that the potential impacts of climate change on key resources are assessed and effectively communicated to support the development of policies that allow industry to minimize adverse effects by optimizing adaptation responses (e.g. by providing flexible management arrangements) and seizing opportunities as they arise (e.g. for species where productivity increases).

This project has been identified as a clear and immediate need through the SEAP Plan (draft) and also establishes a platform of baseline information from which we can start to address several key priority areas identified in the Draft Marine National Adaptation Research Plan (NARP). Priorities identified in the draft NARP include 1/ Which farmed species in which locations are most likely to be impacted as a result of climate change?, and for fisheries 2/ Which fishery stocks, in which locations, are most likely to change as a result of climate change? What will those changes be (e.g., in distribution, productivity) and when are they likely to appear under alternative climate change scenarios? Clearly, comprehensive and synthesised information on the sensitivities and tolerances of key species are the first steps required to address these priorities.